No Time For Nuts
No Time for Nuts is an Academy Award nominated, computer animated short film from Blue Sky Studios (20th Century Fox Animation), starring Scrat of Ice Age fame, premiering on the DVD release of Ice Age: The Meltdown, much in the same vein as Gone Nutty on the previous movie's DVD release. It was nominated for an Oscar in the "Animated Short" category for 2007, though it never received a billing with a Fox feature film. Due to the time travelling theme of the short, it is not considered canon (possibly a strange dream of Scrat's). Plot Scrat, while trying to find a place to bury his acorn, finds a buried time machine next to the ice-encased body of a time traveller, who appears to be Albert Einstein. He accidentally activates the machine, sending the acorn to somewhere. Scrat gets mad and tries to beat up the time machine, but it sends him to the Middle Ages. After the acorn becomes wedged under a rock, Scrat uses a sword found in a stone (like in Disney's The Sword in the Stone) as a lever to move the rock. He pulls out the sword, but now finds himself under attack by a group of unseen archers. He grabs the acorn (now disloged from the rock) and time machine and races off to find cover, only to hide in the barrel of a lit cannon, which fires him into the path of the incoming arrows. The time machine teleports the acorn, and Scrat manages to activate the machine just in time. He materializes in an arena in Ancient Rome. Scrat reaches for his acorn, but is dragged off when his tail is caught in a chariot pulled by a horse. Scrat manages to free himself and introduces himself to the crowd like a champion, proudly holding up his acorn, but hears the growl of a lion coming from a tunnel. He activates the time machine again, and apparently lands back in his home time. He is overjoyed, but he soon learns that it is really 1912 when he sees the RMS Titanic ''heading towards him. The time machine is activated again, and Scrat finds himself in time of the first ''Ice Age film, where he finds another Scrat and fights himself for his acorn (Manfred, Sid, Diego, and Roshan make a cameo appearance). The time machine fires, sending him to a flurry of different, dangerous locations (dematerialising shortly before he had otherwise be killed): Under a launching rocket, a darkened jewelry store with a diamond, a girl's locker room, where he got hit by a hairbrush, the height of the French Revolution (where he appears under the guillotine), during Benjamin Franklin's electricity experiment, in front of a wrecking ball, in front of a nuclear weapons test, on the tracks of a steam train, and in front of Michelangelo's David, his head obscuring the statue's groin. Frustrated, Scrat punches the machine, which sends him into a strange realm of floating timepieces. Scrat spots his acorn and grabs it, but is sucked into a wormhole, along with his acorn and the time machine. The wormhole lands Scrat in front of an enormous oak tree. Overjoyed at the sight of so many nuts, he tosses away his acorn, which activates the time machine. Before he can be swept through time, Scrat beats the time machine into submission. Scrat attempts to remove the nuts from the tree, but discovers that it is only a statue, with a plaque on it reading, "Here Stood the Last Oak Tree." Scrat realizes that he is in the far future, where oak trees (and acorns) are extinct. He makes a dash for his acorn, but the time machine manages to transport the acorn away one last time before collapsing into bits. Stranded in the acorn-less future, Scrat lets out a scream of frustration, ending the film. Then the zapped acorn ends up in the credits of the film. External links *No Time for Nuts Official Blue Sky Studios Website *Co-director Chris Renaud on No Time for Nuts Animated News & Views interview *No Time for Nuts at the Big Cartoon DataBase *No Time for Nuts at the Internet Movie Database